


Sister Golden Hair

by LucilleBarker



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: Adult Content, Domestic, Episode: s03e10 Lantern, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25603138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LucilleBarker/pseuds/LucilleBarker
Summary: Kim asks Jimmy for help. Set during “Lantern.”
Relationships: Jimmy McGill | Saul Goodman/Kim Wexler
Comments: 22
Kudos: 51





	Sister Golden Hair

**Author's Note:**

> Back at it again!
> 
> Title from America’s “Sister Golden Hair” (1975). Takes place the same night Jimmy tells Kim “he doesn’t give a shit about the office” and the last time Jimmy sees Chuck.

Somehow, using her left arm felt more unnatural to Kim Wexler than the fixed, stationary positioning of her right arm in a cast. Her muscles stretched and joints crackled as she tried to run a hairbrush through her tangled strands. She twisted her wrist to wrestle the bristles free from her ends, yanking hair out of their follicles.

“Argh!” Kim roared.

She slammed the hairbrush down on the counter, the wooden handle hitting the the surface with a _clack._

“Everything okay?” Kim could hear the rush of water and the clanging of dishes as Jimmy rinsed them and put them into the dishwasher. She rubbed at the point in her forehead that carried her ache, her dizziness, and her frustration.

“I’m fine,” she answered. Her reflection said otherwise: cuts marked her face, and her complexion pale from the nauseating side effects of her pain meds. Jimmy had spent the last 24 hours waiting on her hand and foot—cooking her breakfast, insisting that she drink Gatorade and water, picking up her prescriptions. _Letting go of the office_.

If Jimmy _wanted_ to help, she couldn’t stop him. He was an adult, it made him feel better. But she didn’t ask for it. Kim needed control. It didn’t count as help when she asked Francesca to drive her to Blockbuster, scouring the aisles of DVD cases while Francesca called Billy Gatwood to refer his case out to Schweikart. It didn’t count because she wasn’t vulnerable. She could take care of herself. Protect herself.

* * *

_“Mom, stop!”_

_“Then stop pulling away from me.”_

_“It hurts!”_

_“Kim, stop.”_

_“Stop it!”_

_“Kim, calm down. It doesn’t hurt that much._ _See? That’s all it took. Look how pretty it is.”_

_Ten-year-old Kim’s head ached from the pulling and the twisting. She couldn’t sit on the part of her bottom where her mother smacked her hard with the flat of the brush when Kim tried to fight back. Her hair was stiff from the hairspray that choked her, and her face felt heavy under all the makeup that her mother painted on her._

_She wanted to hide in her room. She wanted nothing to do with these kids from school that she didn’t know, or the relatives relatives with thick accents and thicker skulls. She wanted to climb out of her bedroom window and run out into the snow, run into the desert, run into the ocean._

_But now she had to pretend to smile._

_“Say cheese!” The camera flashed. Her mother smiled and rushed over to kiss the top of her head. “Happy birthday, Kimmy! Who’s ready for cake?”_

* * *

Kim sighed. She could trust Jimmy. She could. Couldn’t she?

“Actually, Jimmy,” she called. “Can you, um... can you help me out real quick?”

Jimmy appeared in the doorway, and she took a good look at his reflection in the mirror. He was still wearing his blue polo from the beginning of the day, didn’t even bother to switch from his blue jeans into his pajama bottoms. His hair was disheveled from running errands. He looked weary. He also looked like he could keep doing house chores for hours in spite of weariness. He held a grey dish towel in his hand, wiping away water and dirty dishes and the day that refused to end.

“What’s up?” Jimmy asked.

Kim picked up the hairbrush, considered saying ‘never mind’ and muddling her way through. Or taking his electric razor and buzzing her head. She turned around and looked him in the eye as she mumbled, “I need you to brush my hair.”

It almost seemed like he forgot to breathe. Was this really so shocking?

* * *

_She gasped into the crook of his neck, biting and sucking at the tender flesh. Her fingernails scored down his back as he moved in and out of her. He felt so fucking good, he was so good, Jesus Jimmy, don’t stop, please, don’t stop!_

_Then he tangled his fingers in her hair—_

_“Stop!” Kim cried out._

_Jimmy jumped back like he’d been electrocuted, pulled out of her, pulled away from her. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I forgot, I didn’t—”_

_Gooseflesh prickled over Kim’s body, reacting to the confusing mixture of cold air meeting her sweat-covered skin, a primal need to have Jimmy on top of her, and an instinctive fear built upon childhood trauma. She covered her eyes with one hand. Forced herself to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Jimmy was good. Inhale. Exhale. Jimmy stopped. Breathe in. Breathe out. Jimmy wouldn’t hurt her._

_“It’s okay,” she gulped. “I’m okay.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_Kim pushed herself up, ran her hands over her head. She was safe. Her own touch made her feel in control. “Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m sure.”_

_“Here, let me get you some water.”_

_“It’s fine, Jimmy. Come here.”_

_“Kim—_

_“I’m okay, I promise. I’m okay.”_

_She was able to draw him back in. They started over, adding kindling bit by bit to the fire she had put out. Kim eventually had Jimmy on his back and started riding him at her pace, torturing him into whimpers and groans as she slowly rolled her hips. All the while she_ _held him down by his wrists, pinning his hands above his head where she could see them._

* * *

Okay, maybe asking him to brush her hair _was_ that shocking.

“Are you sure?” Jimmy asked. 

_No_ , _I’m not sure_ , Kim thought. 

The pain medication barely numbed the excruciating pain in her arm, so the muscles in her neck and back were doing their best to tense up. The acid in her stomach felt like it was boiling. It was not always painful experience when her mother stroked her hair. That was the problem. She couldn’t predict what her mother would do. Her mother was capable of kissing the tail of the braid she had made in Kim’s hair. She was also capable of screaming at Kim, slurring her words as she dragged Kim out of multiple homes before multiple landlords called the police. Kim buried Nebraska away like Edgar Allan Poe’s _Cask of Amontillado_. Her past was always screaming at her and banging against the stone wall she had encased it in. She’d be stupid not to notice that it was finding it’s way out, blood-stained chips of rock on the floor of her mind.

Kim waved her hairbrush like a little white flag. If this was giving up, at least it was on her terms.

Jimmy stepped behind her and took hold of the handle. His gaze flicked between the brush and her gaze in the mirror. 

“Just to be clear,” he warned, “I don't know what I'm doing.”

He placed it against her head and it immediately snagged in a mess of hair, causing her to hiss as he pulled the brush out.

“Sorry,” he grimaced.

Kim shook her head. “It’s okay. Start at the ends first and then work your way up.”

Jimmy tried again, following her instructions and combing through the the ends of her hair. Kim closed her eyes as the brush moved upwards. The bristles gently scraped against her scalp in slow movements. A quiet moan escaped her, and Kim breathed in. She could not fully let go of her tension, but her muscles relaxed bit by bit with every soft exhale. She had to admit it. _This_ _was pretty nice._

“Is it?”

Kim opened one eye. Jimmy was smirking at her. “I said that out loud, huh?”

“Yep.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, it feels nice.”

“Glad I’m doing something right.”

For all of his bluster and showboating, Jimmy was tender with her. His touch on her shoulder was soft, as if a firmer grip could break her. As if anything could break her after all she’d been through.

“Did you ever have short hair?” Jimmy asked. “Or have you always kept it long?”

“I cut it once. I was sixteen. I didn’t even go to the local beauty school, I did it myself. I went nuts and cut it super short...” Kim raised her eyebrows as she clarified, “ _Rosemary’s Baby_ short.”

Jimmy’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding.”

Kim chuckled. “My mom was pretty mad.”

“Hard to imagine you with a Mia Farrow cut.”

* * *

_“I cannot believe you.”_

_Kim stared out the passenger side window as her mother grumbled. That morning she had arrived at Red Cloud High with a tight ponytail that her mother once again insisted she could style into something to “attract a boyfriend.” Once again, every strand was glued in place with hairspray and the chemicals were pungent enough to cover the smell of burnt hair. Once again, her classmates told her she looked like a New York City whore._

_“Hey, Kim,” Brent Parks sneered. “I’ll pay you $50 if you cut off that rat’s nest?”_

_“I’ll double that,” his girlfriend Amanda said._

_“I’d pay more money to see her hair gone than to fuck her!” Lyle announced._

_Kim wouldn’t say “something inside her snapped” like Principal Vernon suggested to her mother. But the transition from natty teased 1980’s ponytail to slicing it off with scissors was fairly swift. Her bullies were slack-jawed as she held up her chopped-off locks and said, “Pay up.”_

_The only mistake Kim made was doing it during school hours. Now she was doomed to a week of detention and at least two weeks of her mother’s fury. The station wagon was basically her prison transport, reeking of stale beer and cigarette smoke. She didn’t even want to think about the empty condom wrapper she found in the backseat that morning._

_“Do you like looking like a boy?” her mother asked. “Because that’s what the kids are gonna call you at school.”_

_“Maybe I can finally get on the baseball team,” Kim mumbled to herself._

_“Say again?” her mother snapped._

_“Nothing,” Kim replied coolly._

_“If you’re going to sass me, you better be brave enough to say it to my face.”_

_Dinner was McDonald’s. Kim’s mom paired her cheeseburger and fries with three bottles of Lone Star beer. As Kim finished her Chicken McNuggets, her mother stumbled behind her to pick up the trash. There was one nugget left in the box, but there was no stopping her mom. She was in “clean up mode” and it went straight into the trash can._

_Kim pulled at one of the roughly cut tresses next to her ear. Each piece was uneven, but her head felt lighter than it had in a long time. She smiled as she thought,_ “I did this. Me. I made this.”

_Then long fingers tipped with manicured nails gently caressed the back of her head, and Kim leapt out of her chair._

_“What are you doing!”_

_Her mom’s mouth gaped open. Kim couldn’t believe it. After all these years, her mother was clueless to the pain she had caused. The woman had no idea. _

_“What’s wrong?” she asked._

_“Don’t touch me!” Kim screamed as she rushed to her room. Her door slammed against the frame and she turned the lock. Her mother banged against the wood, Kim’s name muffled and slurred on the other side. She buried her head under her pillow and the fabric ruffled the shortened blonde locks as her mother screamed for her louder and louder._

_“Kim, come out here! What did I do wrong, huh? What!”_

* * *

Jimmy went quiet after his “Mia Farrow” comment. His eyes were cast down on her hair, but he wasn’t looking at Kim. He was somewhere else inside his mind.

“What?” she asked.

Jimmy blinked. He was suddenly back on the plane of existence where she was. “Nothing. Just thinking.”

Kim rolled her eyes. “Oh god, you’re going to be that guy.”

“What guy?”

“The kind of guy that says, ‘Long hair on women is beautiful. Don’t cut your hair, please, it’s so pretty.’”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

She chuckled. “Sure.”

“I don’t care about your hair, Kim,” Jimmy said. He ran the brush through one last time. She smiled at him, ran her index finger through to admire his work. But in the mirror, the lights made his watery blue eyes glisten with unshod tears and shadow highlighted the lines on his face.

“You know you matter to me, right?” he asked.

Kim frowned, her eyebrows knitted together. “Where is this coming from?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Just saying it. Do you feel okay?”

Kim swallowed a lump in her throat. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

He held the hairbrush out for her to take it. Instead of taking it from him, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, holding him in place.

“Hey.” She pulled at him gently, insisting that he come down to her level. Jimmy winced as he got down on his knees, and she let go of his wrist as soon as she had him where she wanted him. Her forefinger traced over his brow, brushing his fringe away from his forehead so that she could kiss his forehead.

He closed his eyes and sighed in contentment. Smiled as she ran her fingers through his hair, massaged over his scalp. His head tried to follow where her touch went, a silent request for a little more pressure.

“Is this okay?” Kim asked.

“Eh, it’s fine,” he murmured playfully.

She didn’t say anything when three short hairs nestled themselves between her fingers and abandoned his head.

* * *

_Kim held up a photograph, waved it to catch his attention._

_“So this is your dad?”_

_“Yep.”_

_When Jimmy took the job with Davis & Main, Kim helped him drive his few belongings to his brand new corporate apartment in Santa Fe. They loaded in his clothes and a few boxes into a nicely furnished though rudimentary two-story apartment. Jimmy took her on a tour of his new home, ending in the bathroom where they stripped bare and she had her back pressed against the shower tile._

_Kim laid on the bed, her hair was still damp, and the towel wrapped around her torso did no favors against the chilling air of the A/C. Jimmy wore only pajama pants as he unpacked his clothes and placed them in the dresser. The only item without a place was a shoebox filled with photographs and knick-knacks like an empty Band-Aid tin, and Kim couldn’t help but rummage through it. Baby photos of Jimmy and Chuck, family vacations, birthdays, a grand opening for a store..._

_She studied the photo of Jimmy’s dad in her hands. In black and white film, Mr. and Mrs. McGill were posing by a lake, dressed in bathing suits and enjoying their honeymoon. If she looked close enough, she could see the bump in Mrs. McGill’s stomach. (“Mom and Dad weren’t exactly model Catholics before they got married,” Jimmy had explained back in their mailroom days.)_

So this was what a normal mother and father looked like _, she thought._

_“He’s handsome.”_

_Jimmy lifted his head from his task. He stared at her in disgust, his nose wrinkled and the corners of his mouth turned down as far as they could go. “No.”_

_“I said he was handsome, not that I want to go back in time and marry him.”_

_“You do realize he looks just like Chuck?”_

_“I have eyes.”_

_Jimmy squinted his eyes. “You do?”_

_He closed the dresser drawer and climbed on top of the bed. He brought his face as close to hers as possible, and Kim giggled as he examined her eyes in uncomfortably close proximity. “Huh. Would you look at that.”_

_Jimmy stole a quick kiss and turned to lay on his back. He closed his eyes, rubbing his palm along her outer thigh as his breathing evened and he was on the brink of a nap. Kim turned the photo over to look at the back. In blue ink, cursive script labeled the photo, “Ruth and C. Willard McGill / 1943.” When she flipped it back to the front, Kim took another look at Ruth. Her smile was bright and full of joy, eclipsing the reserved nature of her husband. At the same time, compared to the photographs she had seen where Mr. McGill was alone, Ruth seemed to bring out something in Willard when they were together._

_“You definitely take after your mom, but I can see resemblance between you and your dad.”_

_“God, I hope not,” Jimmy muttered. Kim lifted her head to look at him. He must have felt her gaze because he briefly opened his eyes to check in with her before closing them again. “There are some, uh, traits of my dad that I don’t want.”_

_“Like?”_

_Jimmy paused. What could be so bad about his father?_

_Then his tone lightened. “Well, for starters, I’m not a fan of the receding hairline.”_

_He was changing the subject, and she knew it. It’s what she did when Nebraska was brought up. When he talked about his mom, and then he asked her about hers. “Jimmy...”_

_“I’m serious. Dad lost his hair by 45. Same with Chuck. And I need you to promise me that you’ll shoot me the minute it happens to me.”_

_She nudged him. “Stop!”_

_“I’m so vain,” Jimmy began to sing off-key and off-beat. “This song is def-in-ite-ly about me—”_

_Kim couldn’t help herself. She laughed, burying her face in his shoulder and begging him to stop. “No!”_

_“I’m so vain!—I’m so vai-yain!—I’m gonna be that jerkoff with the combover pretending there’s nothing wrong with me.”_

_She tickled his sides and he yelped, batting her hands away from him. “I give, I give!” he surrendered._

_Kim rolled off the bed and dropped the towel on the floor. She dug through the dresser and pulled Jimmy’s University of American Samoa sweatshirt over her head. The fabric had softened from years of use, the letters faded from being washed._

_Jimmy turned over on his side, eyes closed again and body starting to relax into all of the comforts a bed had to offer. The mattress dipped under her weight as she curled behind him, draping her arm across his middle._

_“I think you could pull it off,” Kim told him._

_“Yeah?” His response was distracted, breathy as he let sleep overtake his senses._

_“Yeah,” she promised, closing her own eyes._

* * *

Kim palmed his face with one hand, running her thumb over his cheek. Jimmy opened his eyes, gazing at her in a way that almost made her heart stop. “We should get ready for bed,” he sighed.

She shook her head. “Not tired. Maybe we could watch a movie.”

Jimmy nodded and pressed his lips to hers. Kim kissed him back and held him to her. She tilted her head to deepen it, running her tongue along his lower lip. He groaned into her mouth and she moved her hand to his polo’s collar and gripped the stiff fabric. Jimmy pulled back and pressed his forehead against hers.

“Kim—”

“Shh,” she said. She kissed him again, moved her lips across his jaw, down his neck. Jimmy held her shoulders, not pushing her back, but not pulling her forward.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he rasped.

Kim’s mouth curved into a mischievous grin. It was dizzying. “You’re telling you’re not turned on after all of that?”

“I’m turned on by anything, but your arm is covered in plaster.”

“It’s going to be on for at least eleven weeks, so you’re going to have to find a better excuse.”

“Is the Vicodin still making you nauseous?”

Fuck, he could tell. Kim pressed her head into his shoulder, growling in defeat. It also stopped the room from spinning more than it already was.

“Fine,” she acquiesced. “But soon.”

“Soon,” he repeated.

Jimmy rubbed her back, his fingers barely brushing against ends of her hair. The muscles in Kim’s back flinched and tensed. This was decades worth of self-preservation at work. She nuzzled into his neck and lifted herself up to meet his eye.

“Um, I might need you to help me again,” Kim confided. “When I go back to work, I don’t want to wear it down and have hair in my face. You’d just have to put it in a clip, nothing fancy. It’s easy, I promise.”

Jimmy nodded. “Okay.”

As midnight came and went, the DVD player had returned to the main menu for _The Hudsucker Proxy_ , and she debated hitting play again. Kim laid her head Jimmy’s lap and she felt herself rise and fall with every breath he took. He was going to wake up to a sore neck in the morning, but she wanted him to sleep for just a little while longer. He needed rest just as much as she did.

She ran her fingers through the ends of her hair. Laying in his lap had already started to tangle her hair again. Her scalp still tingled from the light scratch of bristles against her head, her muscles sore from expecting the worst when it never came. A chill crawled up her spine as memories of Nebraska winters screamed from their stone wall, but the deep inhale and shift of Jimmy McGill brought her back. He was good. She was safe.

“You matter to me, too,” she whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> If you go back and watch the series, notice how Jimmy never touches Kim’s hair. Not once. Meanwhile, Kim starts brushing Jimmy’s bangs out of his face starting in Season Four. 
> 
> I’m fascinated by the most insignificant details, and I use them to create  
> A N G S T !


End file.
